


Past the gate

by jongdae



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: M/M, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-18 18:07:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4715534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jongdae/pseuds/jongdae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yifan breaks into his alma mater with his best friend Chanyeol on one of their drunken night escapades. He usually forgets everything by morning (it's far more complicated than just that) but this time, he feels like he might have met the love his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Past the gate

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by JJ Lin's "If Only", and loosely based off of the MV of the same song. If you listened to it, you might get a grasp of the story's mood ;v;
> 
> This is sort of Kris-centric, and has hints of Krisyeol.

There’re only a few things that have ever really helped Kris get along with his life. 

 

One. Driving around the outskirts of towns on clear nights.

Or more specifically, he drives to get lost. He likes to pull up and step out and try to figure out where he is. He likes to sit atop the trunk, look back at the endless road and wonder what the vastness of it all means to him. It usually means nothing on most nights. Other nights it means hey you have a blurry past, and you don’t want to look at it.

But that’s the most he’d admit to himself before thinking, nah, it’s gotta be nothing. He would then pick a thin cigarette and flick open his lighter, take life at a more casual angle.

He likes to listen to two things when he smokes: piano pieces and silence. But when he listens to piano songs, he often finds himself listening closely for the gaps of silence between the notes. 

The gaps sometimes drive him crazy. But he keeps telling himself a little craziness would do him more good than bad at this point of his life. He’s always been told he needs a bit of spark. A bit of madness.

 

Two. Biking at full speed in the rain. Better yet, in a squall.

He would pick cycling paths that are lifted from the roads on bridges meant to give one the sense that they might be a teensy bit closer to the sky.

He’s not that much of a dreamer though. He just uses it because if ever he decides to bike blindly he would have less chances of running into a car. Maybe more chances of biking off the bridge though. Decidedly, he likes to play with chances. Sometimes he likes sitting at the edge and screaming into the drizzle too. It relieves him of the stress accumulated from too many clear nights in a row.

 

Three. Drinking when it’s cloudy. Cloudy or whatever is between clear and rainy. It doesn’t snow where he lives. Maybe if it snowed, he’d be a very different person. Maybe. Maybe not.

He drinks with a good friend. A friend called Park Chanyeol. They’ve gone to the same primary, middle, high school, college. They became friends some time when Kris was in second year in high school. They took ten years before saying: “Oh hey, hi, I know you, don’t I?”

 

 

Four. When it’s cloudy outside, and he’s got the means to drink, and his friend Park Chanyeol is with him, and he’s found a piano, and only when these three conditions are met, he’d play it. 

 

Five. When it’s cloudy outside, and he’s got the means to drink, and his friend Park Chanyeol is with him, and he’s found a piano, and he’s played it even though he has no idea how or what he is playing, he would go home.

Go home, find rest, and ultimately, _forget_.

 

 

Kris is not a successful anything. He’s just a man nearing his thirties with nothing much accomplished. He works at a decent firm, gets paid decently, gets respected decently, drives a decent car. But maybe decent isn’t exactly what he wants. Decent has always felt synonymous to half-assed to Kris.

And that’s enough for him to excuse himself for a drink or two or three or a million.

 

 

He’s not loud when he’s drunk. Maybe that’s why he needs Park Chanyeol. He needs someone loud, next to him, who can remind him that he’s drinking, otherwise he probably can’t tell. It’s silly, but maybe that’s how it works. Maybe that’s how it’s meant to be.

He’s extremely quiet. He likes to focus, imagine, _hallucinate_ perhaps, how the alcohol spreads through his body, runs through his blood, rushes to his head. It’s a nice lukewarm feeling. It’s also a very sad and empty one. 

This day isn’t any different. 

It’s cloudy. He laughs silently, at how he’s got it all figured out just by looking at the sky. Sometimes he checks up the weather forecast and it’s even more pathetic.

Kris calls up Chanyeol through his smartphone. 

“Hey yeah, I was thinking,” the younger barks from the receiver with his usual enthusiasm. “Wanna visit our alma mater?”

“Which one,” Kris answers into his phone, pressed between his shoulder and cheek as he locks the door, the click of keys echoing down the dark hall.

“Our high school? It’s closer.”

“Alright. Drinks first though? My boss’s back today. I need something to down.”

“Yeah, sure. You wouldn’t break in, otherwise.”

Kris raises his head from staring at the floor. “Break in? We’re breaking in?”

Chanyeol’s laughter resonates through the line. “Oh come on, we’re not gonna just head out at ten p.m. just to stare at the gate. That’s pointless.”

Kris cracks his neck left and right before replying. “Sure. Whatever. We’re getting drinks. That’s all that matters.”

“Figures. Meet you at the usual place, then.”

“Sure.”

 

 

Kris doesn’t feel drunk enough but he’s only got one bottle in his hand, and Chanyeol’s bottle in the other. His friend is climbing at the gate, loud and obnoxious like he always is. Not entirely in the bad way though. 

“Th’s gate is a frickin’ bi’tch t’climb,” he slurs, pretty badly. “Think I m’ght break my neck comin’ down th’ othe’ side.”

“Possibly,” Kris says, taking a sip from his bottle, eyes almost unblinking. “Why are we doing this again?”

“I dunno,” Chanyeol cocks his head, “why do peopl’ visit their old schools ‘gain?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” Kris admits.

He steps forward and looks at the lock and for a few seconds it’s hard to focus his eyes on it. When he does, he realizes it’s actually open. He flips the latch. The gate door opens like magic. 

“Open sesame,” Kris says, swinging his arms open in a rough attempt at sarcasm.

Chanyeol just blinks and he says in his clearest drunk voice: “Wow.”

 

 

They walk down unsteadily through the main hallway. The notice boards are filled with new deco paper and the floors smell like window cleanser, and the windows smell like floor cleanser. 

“W’s this our— class? Looks so much like it.”

“We were in different years, Chanyeol,” Kris reminds. Chanyeol lifts his head to dip it back down.

“Ahah. Yeah. That’s true—” He hiccups.

The younger moves on and stops at the next classroom, looking through the windowpanes.

“I g’t this feeling this was yours,” he whispers and Kris barely catches it before it’s gone with the howling wind.

He looks into it, but the desks and chairs are lined up so eerily he feels a bit nauseous and decides to look away. He steps into a yard with a small three-level fountain, and Chanyeol follows suit.

“Let’s go check theeee…. whatsitcalled, ‘ssembly room?”

It’s not a very tempting idea, Kris thinks but he shrugs and nods. There’s nothing else that could be more interesting. Or less interesting. 

Nearly an hour later, Kris decides it hadn’t been the best idea, given they took way too long just to find the large auditorium. 

Nevertheless, Chanyeol bursts through the two large doors and runs down the aisle and flings himself on a few seats like a giddy child, taking out his phone and taking selfies and sending snapchats and one of those goes to Kris’s phone but the composed man doesn’t bother checking.

The lights are only half turned on; he steps to the control panel to flick some on.

He flicks the stage lights first.

And that’s when he sees it.

 

A grand piano. Majestic. Black. 

 

His breath stifles for a heartbeat, and he can feel Chanyeol’s gaze also turn to it, and the younger freezes.

“Ah, man, Kris.”

Kris laughs half-heartedly and takes another gulp from his bottle, a smile dangling from his mouth. He singsongs: “Good _bye_ tomorrow.”

Chanyeol shakes his head. “I _w_ eally’wanted us to remember this more, aish. Can’t you pass for tonight? We’re busy— remini— renimi— reminisce— remisce— fuck that word.”

“Reminiscing?” Kris suggests as he starts walking to the stage.

“Yeah! That. _You_ just stay away from that piano.”

“I don’t ever say no to pianos.”

“You say no to pianos when you’re fucking sober, com’ on. Com ‘ere to my arms instead. You’d n’ver say… no to m’ arms?”

“You should be encouraging me _not_ to drink, not _not_ to play a piano. Your arms aren’t so tempting.”

“Kris.”

“When I’m at a piano, you call me Wu Yi Fan.”

Chanyeol laughs. “This ‘s embaaaaaarrassing. Just dun tell me tomorrow I shoulda tried stopping ya’ cause I did. I tried. And you’re impossible.”

Kris passes a bottle to Chanyeol before climbing onto the stage and walking over to the piano. There’s something tantalizing about the ensuing silence. He passes a hand across the smooth black surface. 

He doesn’t remember where he places his own bottle but it doesn’t matter, he’s figured how to open the lid and settle himself, and he has a foot on one of the pedals and his fingers are already playing.

He doesn’t even know what he’s playing.

 

Chanyeol never stops him once he starts. Kris never stops himself once he starts. It’s a golden rule.

He doesn’t know what he even hears. He thinks he’s deaf to whatever he’s playing. 

But he thinks he plays nice. He thinks there isn’t much meaning in his notes but then again, maybe he placed all meaning into the gaps between them instead. He likes to concentrate on those. He doesn’t know if that makes him a bit mad. He wishes it does. 

He throws his head back and he just lets go. He lets go of the stress he’s accumulated during the week because they hadn’t had a cloudy day for a while. He lets go of all the deadlines and assignments he has due. He lets go of his thoughts, feelings, loneliness.

Whatever the shit he’s playing, at least it sounds nice to his ears. He sways a bit, but he’s not entirely sure if it’s to the melody, or to his drunkenness.

 

He’s lost in the music, so it takes Chanyeol throwing a bottle at a corner two meters away from him to break his trance. His hands fall unto multiple keys in a thud that makes his heart sink low. 

That’s when he looks up and sees the silhouette at the double door entrance.

 

 

He tries to stand up but he knocks his knees into the edge and he winces back down, so then he just stays still, goose bumps rising on the back of his arms.

Should he run? He eyes Chanyeol but the younger is just trying to disappear, sinking deeper into his seat as if it could possibly swallow him up and send him elsewhere, preferably back at the convenience store where he can down some cheap beer and forget they ever broke into a school.

Should he say something? He looks up at the shadow but the lights are blinding, and somehow he feels exposed, cornered, helpless.

“Who are you?”

The stranger’s voice has a treble to it that Kris can’t decide if he likes or not. It sends shivers down his spine and makes him break into cold sweat. 

He squints.

“Thirty-first gen student. Student number one-o sixty-one double-o. No offenses,” he calls out, rather instinctively, robotically, nervously cold. “We’re just visiting our alma mater.”

“In the middle of the night?” The voice asks, slightly bemused. “Trying to avoid traffic?” Slightly sarcastic.

Kris can tell the other is crossing their arms. He has a sudden urge to take a swig at his bottle but it is unfortunately out of his reach.

He doesn’t answer, for better measure.

The other uncrosses their arms. “Well, it doesn’t matter. You’ve broken into school grounds without authorization. The police should be arriving soon. You’ve got less than five to run.”

Kris holds his hands up hesitantly; he tries to seem nonchalant. 

“And you’re warning us because?” he asks, just for the conversation to keep going because he decides he quite likes the voice.

There’s a sort of silence that submerges everything in the room for a while, swallowing it whole, and for the first time in his life Kris feels physically uneasy – although drunk. His arms tense up, his fingers twitch uncontrollably, his bottom lip trembles slightly.

 

“Because of the nice piano piece from just now,” the stranger finally says.

 

The words echo through the aisles, and somehow there’s a familiar tune lifted off of them. Kris shudders.

Chanyeol, who is still sunk awkwardly into his front-row seat, arms and legs out of place, his shoes in his hands, motions with his eyes for them to take the warning and head out the exit next to the stage curtains. Kris starts breathing a bit heavily. He glances at his friend then back at the silhouette. He gulps dryly.

“I’m flattered,” he responds uneasily, rubbing the back of his neck. He then asks, out of sheer curiosity, “Who are you?”

 

The man in question steps out into the light. There’s a dimpled smile, friendly eyes, auburn-coloured hair. 

However, the stranger’s whole expression offers something rather inscrutable to Kris. Maybe it’s the alcohol. Maybe it’s the distance, he muses. Maybe it’s the fact that he won’t remember any of this the next morning.

“I’m a music teacher here,” the man says carefully, looking down at Kris, leaning forward on the back of a red-cushion seat from the topmost row. The distance should not have made them have eye contact but Kris feels it. He feels their eyes locking. He closes his eyes and tries breaking it. He squeezes tight.

It doesn’t really break.

By the time he’s opened them again, there’re flashes of blue and red and white lights that alternate, bending in from the entrance, into the auditorium, and soon, he can hear the roaring of sirens.

“That’s your cue, student number one-o sixty-one double-o,” the man singsongs softly before slipping away himself.

 

 

 

To say Kris has forgotten everything is a half-truth. A ninety-nine percent truth. A one percent lie.

The lie to it is that he wakes up to his high school student number being repeated by a stranger’s voice, in his mind. 

He spends his breakfast wondering. It’s not something he is used to do. He never eats his drunken night mysteries for breakfast. It’s decidedly not his cup of tea.

His text-messages with Chanyeol suggest they had visited their old high school during their drinking session. It accounts for the student number being mentioned, if anything.

There must have been a third person, Kris hypothesizes. It’s likely. They must have broken in. They might have been caught. 

Chanyeol is loud anyways. They _must_ have been caught. But given he’s back in one piece, at his own place, a pathetic flat, they must have run away successfully.

But even if they did all this, Kris does not understand why he would bother remembering. 

There’s no real thrill to his number, he thinks. Maybe the running away part, but definitely not his high school student ID. He knows his number like the back of his hand. There’s nothing to it. There’s no meaning to it. 

But for such a string of number to resonate through his mind for the rest of his day, he is forced to believe that there just might be something.

Maybe it’s that something that has always been behind the numbers he’s never bothered deciphering. There’s always been emptiness to the zeros that he’s never wanted to think about.

But then again, maybe it’s really that something behind the unfamiliar voice that whispers it, like a criminal’s lullaby.

 

 

“Hey.”

There’s a surprised sound quickly muffled. “I-it’s raining though?!”

Kris knows it’s raining but he tries to ignore the drizzle that’s tapping at his window. “It’s _also_ cloudy.”

Chanyeol laughs from the other side. “Well, naturally.”

Kris allows himself to snicker solemnly into the receiver because no one can see anyways. “Let’s just have a coffee.”

“It’s a rainy Friday night, Kris. _Coffee_? Twisting your own ground-rules you’ve set for years? I’m a bit worried. Where are you?”

There’s genuine concern in the tone and Kris just laughs into his phone.

“What was your student number during high school?” he asks, changing the subject completely, and silence fills the line. It’s a kind of silence Kris likes hearing. 

Hesitant, overwhelming by the second.

He feels sorry for Chanyeol.

“I don’t remember,” the other replies. “Something something something something something one? I know there’s a one.”

Kris scratches his head. “You remember the one?”

“I remember the one, yeah. The rest isn’t important.”

“Right,” Kris wonders at that because it feels like a phrase just thrown out without going through too many brain cells while also sounding like a phrase that could summarize _that night_ , and it gives him the chills. “The tiny coffee shop next to your place. Seven o’clock. Okay for you?”

“As long as you’re paying cause what the fuck, Kris, coffee on a Friday night when we can do so, _so_ much better?”

 

 

He should have just biked like he always does when it’s a rainy evening.

 

Kris has no one to blame but himself, and that doesn’t feel like it could possibly help. He takes a sip from the bitter brown luxury of a drink. He grimaces. 

Chanyeol doesn’t seem all that pleased either. Kris likes to think that means his friend isn’t entirely upset either, though the man grumbles, “You owe me an explanation for ruining a perfectly promising Friday evening.”

Kris looks around indolently. 

The coffee shop is more spacious than he had thought. It’s probably the first time he’s ever walked into an indie one. There’s nothing that exciting but there’s the constant sound of a manual coffee grinder that’s new to his ears. The furnishing isn’t impressive; the overall design is stuck between simplicity and minimalist and makes it feel rather lacking instead. Curiously, there’s a small tucked-up upright white piano at a corner. He dismisses it despite an involuntary quirk of his fingers.

The lighting is too dim, he notes irrelevantly. 

He adds another pouch of sugar, another cup of milk into his coffee because at this point he wants to down it thinking it’s milk with a drop of coffee instead. He’s never buying coffee ever again.

“Kris, I’m bored to hell, I could fall asleep, at _seven_. On a Friday evening,” his friend whines, stretching across the small table.

Kris looks down at his cup’s saucer. “I just wanted a change.”

Chanyeol raises an eyebrow and sits back into his chair. 

“You’ve been strange ever since the high school visit.”

Kris massages his shoulder once. “ _Yeah_ … About that.”

Chanyeol’s eyes darken. “So I’m right? It’s about that.”

“Did… did we meet someone?”

There’s a pause. Chanyeol cocks his head, a string of words seemingly stopping at his lips as he bites down.

“No,” he finally answers, exhaling deeply. Kris takes a sip. He’s never been so calm in his life.

“Who were they?”

“I said no, Kris.”

Kris looks out the window and watches some distance traffic lights turn yellow. “Did I talk to them?”

“Kris, I said—”

“I trust you, pal, but I don’t believe you right now,” Kris whispers softly. Chanyeol takes a deep breath.

“Right. Well, you guys talked, but it’s not like it was significant or life-changing.”

Kris leans forward. “What did we talk about? Who were they?”

Chanyeol hesitates, but then shrugs. 

“A music teacher, if I remember correctly?”

“Why did— what time were we there?”

“I don’t know. Like, eleven? Midnight? One? Somewhere along those times.”

“Why would a music teacher be there in the middle of the night?”

Chanyeol breaks his yawn halfway before he widens his eyes a tad. “Wow— I hadn’t thought about that. I have no idea. But now that you mention, that’s shady as fuck.”

“We were drunk, I don’t suppose our brain cells were working the right way,” Kris reminds, then he puts them back on track. “What did I talk about? With him?”

“I can’t… remember _that_ well. You guys probably exchanged, like, one or two lines. He had called the police. We had to run fast.”

Kris sits back into his chair, and there’s a sinking feeling that he’s not going anywhere with the conversation. He wishes he could just drop it, but there’s something so unsettling about it that he feels his neck stiffen up with inexplicable titillation. He clenches his hands for the time it takes him to get used to it.

“Did I play the piano?” he asks the question he actually doesn’t want to ask because the answer is as clear as daylight. He only ever forgets when a piano is involved.

“Ah. I _tried_ stopping you,” Chanyeol says cautiously and defensively. “Well, it’s not like you remember. But yeah. You played.”

 _What did I play_ Kris finds himself asking. 

But it’s not a question for that particular evening, so he just takes another sip from his cup and offers idly:

“Maybe we should go get ourselves a real drink.”

 

 

 

Days pass, and Kris follows his usual execution plan. He’d drive on clear days, he’d bike on rainy days, he’d have drinks on cloudy days. And if he finds a piano, he forgets everything. Erased without a trace.  
No exceptions. 

It hasn’t been cloudy for a full week. He’s been alternating between clear and rainy days. Today’s it’s clear and he grabs his car keys and locks his door and heads to the basement parking.

He fiddles with an updated iPod. He’s gotten a few more piano songs to listen to. He looks through the passenger seat compartment for a pack of cigarettes. He finds a half-empty one. He flings it aside for later.

 

He doesn’t buckle his seat belt until he’s at the edge of the driveway. He doesn’t turn on the music until he gets to a highway. 

He doesn’t take a smoke until he’s an hour off some direction he can’t bother checking. The place looks familiar though. He’s probably been lost around here several times. It’s getting a tad less intriguing each time; it’s a given. There had been a lot of clear nights, this month, this year.

The puffs of white smoke he exhales dissipate into the cold just as his thoughts start to dissipate into it too.

He hums and finds himself humming to a song he doesn’t exactly know.

He lets go of the cig butt, crushes it under his shoe and climbs back into the driver’s seat, putting down the brake, turning the keys, running the engine.

He knows where he is. His hands turn the plate, already knowing how to go back to the place he thinks he calls home. 

He gets a swelling feeling he has lost control over the habits he’s built up. He meant to build them to keep himself …either sane or insane. Not to keep himself detached.

He takes a careless and sudden u-turn. The car’s tires burn and screech on the road – they leave dark marks.

Then he drives opposite to his house, to a place where he thinks he’d be able to solve mysteries.

 

 

 

The gates are cold. There’s nothing familiar about them despite having spent three whole years going through them. 

The main entrance is locked with a pad as big as his hand with chains that remind him of worms, and it makes him sick.

He needs a drink, he thinks, but the closest convenience store is closed and he doesn’t really want to stray away from his goal when his mind is at its edge, looking down into an abyss he wants to see the bottom of. Besides. No drinks on clear nights. Clear nights call for clear minds, except he’s still not sure if he’s clearer in his mind when he’s sober or when he’s thoroughly drunk.

He takes a breather and closes his eyes. He grabs at the metallic bars and supports himself as he feels his anxiety gnawing at the little energy he has left.

He was about to give up when he hears a tune. 

It’s eerily familiar and alien at the same time, but it feels like it’s beckoning for him. He raises his head and he listens closely to the point where all he hears is a piano and the tips of fingers being pressed gently against its keys.

He shakes the gate once but it won’t budge.

He looks up and tries to see if he could possibly climb over. He considers it. With his height, maybe it’ll just take a few monkey swings and he’ll be over it in no time.

He forgets about the black spikes atop it, and winces when one digs a bit into his arm. But he doesn’t mind the pain. It heightens his senses. He’s over the fence and that’s all that matters.

He jogs down the main hallway and the general notice board is empty with just staples peppered across, non-uniformly. He passes what seems to have been Chanyeol’s classroom back when the younger had been a first year. He pauses, and an image of a fifteen-years-younger Chanyeol appears at a back seat near the window, ghastly but heart-warming and endearing.

He moves along.

He comes across another classroom, and there’s something disconcerting about it, and that gives him enough hint to know it was his own classroom from when he was in his third year. He doesn’t remember his seat. He doesn’t bother.

He turns at a corner, and he can hear the tune even clearer now. 

 

The auditorium is a place he’s never really liked when he was a high school student. Sitting stiffly at a chair, staring at the numerous alumni who did swell at school, achieved some formidable grade, accomplished something extravagant, won something, had something worth displaying, worth showing, worth being seen and talked about.

He pushes the double doors open. 

Only the stage lights are on, and there, in the middle of it, sits a man at the piano.

 

The pianist doesn’t stop although it’s clear they know Kris is there. He continues playing the song as if it’s on loop, as if there doesn’t seem to be an end – nor a beginning – to it.

Kris just takes a seat at the furthest row. 

He closes his eyes and this is all so much better than his road trips to nowhere.

 

After a good five minutes, the song comes to a brusque stop ,and the guy doesn’t turn around when he addresses Kris, he just cocks his head gently to one side.

“Another visit in the middle of the night? You’re fond of this school.” 

Kris sits back, loosening his collar so he can breathe a little better. The voice is surprisingly soft and rounded.

“Fond? No, no,” Kris titters. “You were just playing. I was just passing by.”

The man – now that Kris’s eyes adjust to the lighting and can see better – sports a well-ironed white shirt, light-blue pants, dark-brown hair with an auburn dye that seems to be slightly washed off.

“I was just playing, you were just passing by. I like that,” the man echoes back with an endearing chuckle, hands floating across the keys in a seemingly absent-minded way.

He takes a serene pause before standing up, pushing the bench back. Then, he turns his head, and he smiles.

Kris skips a few heartbeats. He swallows dryly.

It’s a lot to digest in a split second. 

Dimple. Cheeks. Eyes. Nose. Lips.

“How was climbing the gate?” the man says. “I hope you didn’t hurt yoursel—”

The man squints and Kris starts feeling the pain in his arm again, seeping back into his awareness.

“Your arm—”

Suddenly the whole stage seems to be whispering a melodramatic piano piece, to Kris’s ears.

Kris looks down, and it’s actually a little more serious than he had first thought. The wound isn’t too deep, but the blood seems to be flowing, albeit at a very slow pace, almost unmoving to the eye.

The teacher jumps off the stage in a swift, almost practiced, move and runs over. The brisk movement only makes Kris freeze on the spot even though his mind is screaming for him to run.

“Wrap that up, for fuck’s sake, is it still bleeding? The infirmary is—”

Kris tugs on his sleeve to cover up the injury as the other reaches him. “I’m fine. It’s stopped bleeding. It’s just a small cut.”

The shorter brunet doesn’t buy any of it. 

“Pianists don’t need to act tough.”

 

 

It’s only when they’re both somehow running down a hall, with a hand being dragged by the other, that Kris thinks, _well, I’m not a pianist, in the first place_.

 

The infirmary is as Kris remembers. Maybe it’s the second most familiar thing after his classroom. He’s been there one too many times.

The room smells like mentholatum and iodine and something else, something that smells like cleanliness. Kris leans on the doorframe while the other walks to a desk and grabs a sizeable first aid kit from one of its shelves. He turns back to Kris and urges him to show the wound.

Kris complies, albeit reluctant.

“Doesn’t this hurt?”

“Not particularly.”

“I’ve got iodine in my hands. You wouldn’t want to say ‘not particularly’. I could just pour this all over without mercy.”

Kris chuckles in response. 

“It’s going to sting. Brace yourself, tough guy.”

Kris grits his teeth slightly as the pain plunges sharply when the brown liquid hits his injury, but after a few seconds, it seeps and soothes him, and he can’t deny that the (true) pianist’s fingers over his skin helps too.

 

They stay silent for a while and there’s only white moonlight crashing into the white room through white curtains.

“I’m Zhang Yixing,” he says.

Kris jolts and turns his head to the other, confused about what he should respond with.

“You’re Wu Yifan,” Yixing says. Which only confuses him more.

Kris frowns. “How did—”

“Thirty-first gen. Student number one-o sixty-one double-o. I checked student records.”

 

He doesn’t say anything more for a while because all he’s thinking about is how he had been right.

Mystery number one solved. 

Zhang Yixing matches the case.

The words. The numbers. The voice.

 

 

There have been a few changes ever since. 

Kris sleeps much better for once. He wakes up every morning now with Yixing’s piano piece looping nonstop in his mind. He hasn’t listened to any other piano songs just to keep it going because he’s scared of losing it. 

He spends rainy evenings biking to the café close to Chanyeol’s place. He sits regularly at the seat next to the window and watches the traffic, watches the rain wash the colours of city lights down the roads.

He spends cloudy evenings at Chanyeol’s place. A small two and a half. He owns a couch, a bed. He doesn’t own a piano. They’d have beer together. It gives Kris a sense of safety.

 

“You haven’t been you, for a while,” Chanyeol observes, one rainy night. They’re lounging on his couch indolently. Cans of liquor in their hands.

“No, I haven’t,” Kris agrees monotonously. “I haven’t been ever since I was born. You’re late.”

Chanyeol takes a gulp from his can. “In my defence, I wasn’t born back then.”

“Touché.”

There’s a pause.

“—Kris, you’re not telling me something.”

“I don’t have anything to tell,” Kris takes a sip.

Chanyeol puts his can on the table and just bites his lower lip. “Sure.”

Kris feels his stomach sink a bit. He passes an arm over Chanyeol’s shoulders and squeezes, and he rests his head against one, forehead pressing into Chanyeol’s t-shirt.

“If ever I do, you’ll be the first to hear,” he whispers quietly and then closes his eyes.

Chanyeol chuckles. 

“Yeah, I know.”

 

He starts remembering these small bits of conversations from these nights. He wakes up with Chanyeol’s worried voice resonating along with Yixing’s song. And sometimes, Chanyeol’s head on his bare chest.

The memories are a novelty for Kris.

 

 

He spends clear evenings driving to his alma mater. Sometimes the lock at the gate is left subtly open. Sometimes it’s locked. If it’s locked he knows Yixing isn’t around. But he just waits at the gate, taking just one cigarette under the only lit lamplight at the entrance of the dark school, until the other man shows up with the keys.

 

Yixing never plays the unnamed song anymore. Kris never requests it either. He just listens from his seat to whatever the music teacher wants to play.

 

 

He wakes up humming to the pieces sometimes. 

He starts to like remembering things from his evenings. At least, much more than the feeling of utter helplessness on lonely roads and the feeling of numbness when rain rolls down his skin. 

Songs are nice to pass time, he contemplates. Coffee is okay once he gets used to it. Yixing is an enigma he decides he likes pondering about, a lot.

 

 

Things could have just stayed this way, and he would have probably been satisfied. He wouldn’t need any more, he wouldn’t want any more. 

He’s walking on the edge. He thinks he can keep the balance.

 

 

It’s with Yixing that he learns there’s no way he can keep on this way.

 

 

“You don’t ever play,” Yixing says gently when Kris settles at a seat at the same time a piece finishes. “Play for me, tonight?”

Kris is, on one hand, taken by surprise. On the other, completely unfazed.

“Come on,” Yixing cajoles, biting his lower lip as his dimple shows. He pats at the seat.

Kris stands up, but more out of nervousness than anything else. He takes a step only to step back. He isn’t sure what to say or do. 

He laughs tensely. “Well, there’s no occasion. I’m not good without an occasion.”

It’s a lousy excuse, but at that point he doesn’t know how to work his brain cells fast enough to come up with something that did not involve saying, _Actually, I don’t know how to play the piano. You got the wrong man._.

Yixing grins though, and it scares Kris to the point that he hears his own heartbeat echoing across the room.

“As a matter of fact, there _is_ an occasion.”

Kris smiles weakly. 

“It’s— it’s my birthday today,” Yixing hesitates before saying it loud enough to break the stiff pause.

Something knots in Kris’s gut. He slides his hands in his jeans’ pockets. 

Anxiety starts weighing his shoulders down. His breath gets caught in his throat.

He lowers his gaze to the edge of the stage.

“Just ten seconds. Ten seconds is enough,” Yixing whispers. There’s a hint of hurt in the words that makes Kris feel like his glass heart just shattered to pieces. He gulps and looks down at his feet now.

“Five?”

The distance between them could not have allowed such a barely breathed word travel to Kris’s ears, but he hears it. It rings through his mind like a bullet ricocheting.

“It’s okay.”

 _It’s not okay_ , Kris hears instead.

“Another time.”

 _If only_.

 

“I’m sorry,” Yixing says, voice trembling a bit before he sits back on the black bench.

 

 _You don’t owe me an apology_.

 

 

Kris wakes up to a bitter sort of memory. It gives him a headache and heartache he’s been avoiding all his life. He skips breakfast and just heads out, takes a jog down the lane.

It’s a chilly autumn day and he knows he’s caught a cold but he doesn’t care because it helps ease the pain.

It helps him forget, even if only temporarily.

> from **pcy**  
>  [19:02] ill be there in a few. did u need painkillers
> 
> to **pcy**  
>  [19:31] no, thx
> 
> from **pcy**  
>  [19:05] traffic now fck  
>  [19:21] just got u soup. wont be long.  
>  [19:30] wheres ur key
> 
> to **pcy**  
>  [19:31] under the rock
> 
> from **pcy**  
>  [19:31] kris fuck u there’s a bajillion rocks here fml  
>  [19:42] found it  
> 

Chanyeol tumbles into Kris’s flat clumsily. “How’s your fever?” 

Kris groans from the bed, the back of his hand on top of his burning forehead. “Better, I think.”

Chanyeol huffs. “I got soup. Drink up while it’s hot. You got to sweat the heat out.”

Kris sits up and he gets shoved a plastic take-out bowl and a steel spoon Chanyeol had fetched from his kitchenette on the way in. Kris fumbles open the lid and the smell of chicken noodle soup starts seeping into the dark room. 

“The evenings are clear for eight days straight and you catch a cold and you don’t tell me,” Chanyeol says, evidently angry.

“I didn’t want you to worry,” Kris says, his voice sounding more horrible than he had thought.

“Don’t tell me you’ve been out driving in your condition.”

He takes a pause because he’s reminded of the nights in the auditorium. Sitting at a distance, or sitting next to Yixing. Watching him play.

“I haven’t,” Kris says, “I’ve been home.”

Chanyeol sighs.

“You could have called me over. I could have brought you soup every night.”

“I didn’t want to bother you.”

“Kris, this world is inhabited by countless people for a fucking reason. We’re meant to communicate, bother each other, help each other, blablabla, stop living your life according to the fucking weather forecast, stop living your life like you’re All Alone with two capital As, on this planet.”

Kris shivers even though he burns his tongue taking a spoonful of soup, and Chanyeol catches it even though it had been a discreet tremble. The younger turns to the windows and flings the curtains open. He looks out at the sky, and a few minutes slip by.

“I’m sorry. I know it’s not all simple,” he says, still looking at the window. His words form on the pane with white fog.

“Sorry I snapped. I… I was worried.”

 

 

The temperature on his thermometer tells him he’s down a couple of millimetres. He doesn’t have the fever anymore. Kris sighs slightly, in relief.

It’s a cloudy morning. He is about to turn on the television to check the weather forecast, but his thumb stops on the power button of his remote control. 

Back then, it all really started just like this.

This same position, Kris standing in the middle of the living room of this exact apartment he’s been living in forever, the remote in his right hand pointed at the screen, some water dripping slowly from his hair because he had just come out of a cold morning shower.

It could have been anything. He could have rolled a dice. He could have flipped a coin. 

But now, he doesn’t want to have his life sorted through these… meaningless things, anymore.

Meaningless things that make the people around him either see through him because he probably doesn’t exist in their busy world, or have people he cares about say sorry to him when he’s the one who’s the sorriest of them all. When he’s the one who fucked up over and over.

He flings the remote control to the couch, takes a coat and heads out the door.

 

 

A dozen mornings later, he slips a folded paper under a door. He rubs his hands together because it’s cold. He sort of stumbles back onto the sidewalk and mix amongst the pedestrians.

His phone vibrates and he takes it out and reads the messages that come in successively.

> from **pcy**  
>  [10:05] u what  
>  [10:06] wait what  
>  [10:06] kris are u drinking  
>  [10:06] it’s 10 am did u drink, are u drinking, r u drunk  
>  [10:07] if ure sober man u don't know how happy i am for u?!?!  
>  [10:07] they better not be the cheap classes at that shady place near my place tho  
>  [10:07] bacon something what was it called again
> 
> to **pcy**  
>  [10:08] baekhyun’s piano lessons?
> 
> from **pcy**  
>  [10:08] AH yeah yeah yeh baekhyun. bacon. same diff  
>  [10:09] u totally applied there didnt u
> 
> from **pcy**  
>  [10:13] well, i heard they’re ~ ok ~  
> 

Kris smirks briefly. 

 

 

He circles a date on his long-neglected calendar. October seventh. That’s about a little more than two weeks ago. He flips all the past months and they flicker down, blank, void, unused.

Two weeks he hasn’t seen Yixing. Years since he has last circled anything on a calendar. 

He wonders how long it’ll take to be able to play a piece. It’ll take a while, for sure, and he knows.

His first lesson will be tonight. He’s been anticipating it for a while, to say the least.

There are music sheets scattered across the floor because he forgot to close the windows when he had gone to work in the morning. His laptop screen shows at least a dozen tabs open on amateur tutorials and dummies’ guide to playing the piano. 

He’s been practicing on recognizing notes with an app on his phone. He spends the last hour reviewing a session on it. 

He plays the notes, and he closes his eyes.

C.

G.

E.

D.

A song plays in his head and it’s been a while since he’s heard it. Yixing’s song.

It’s nostalgia ringing in his ears. Suddenly he feels overwhelmed.

 

He wants to see Yixing, he thinks, when he steps out of his door and into the dark hallway with one flickering light.

 

The first lesson told him he’s signed up for a long, _long_ journey.

 

He doesn’t exactly know how – maybe it’s the cloudiness outside – but it makes him so anxious he buys a cheap-looking bottle of wine off the rackets at a supermarket and shoves it in a five-cent plastic bag before sprinting up the calm street.

It’s about time withdrawal symptoms start hitting, he excuses to himself as he drinks from the top.

He topples a bit.

He smiles a bit.

He closes his eyes for a bit.

The feeling alternates between _fuck my life, I’m feeling fucking great_ and _fuck my life, period_.

He walks to get lost just like he used to drive to get lost.

 

He was meant to get lost but he arrives, somehow, to the gates of his alma mater. He stares into the empty space behind the bars.

He tries the padlock, but it’s locked. The steel feels cold in his warm hands. Or, alternatively, the steel feels hot in his cold hands. He can’t tell.

He starts humming. He leans against the gate.

He thinks of Yixing and Yixing’s fingers gliding atop piano keys. He thinks of the song, he thinks of what he should have said, should have admitted, on that particular October day. He thinks of his life as is.

And, for the first time in his life, Kris just throws back his head, whispers a prayer through the notes of a song he really wants to know more about.

 

Silent gaps, notes, tune, falls, rises, the pianist behind them.

Everything.

* * *

Yixing doesn’t expect to see Yifan.

He has a foot on a pedal and the other on the ground, a feeling of unsteadiness in his chest.

He’s still at a distance, a few dozen meters off, so Yifan hasn’t noticed him yet. The other’s head is dipped down. He’s wearing ripped jeans, a white tee.

Yixing starts walking his bike as gently as he can.

He gulps when he sees the bottle of wine in the other’s hand. There’s something in him that just twists up and won’t unknot. He can’t decide whether he’s still angry or not. 

He halts.

 

He hears Yifan humming. 

 

It’s the piece Yifan had played the first time they met.  
Yixing starts breathing a bit heavily. He feels a surge of exhilaration take over.

 

 

Yixing is an assistant music teacher, a volunteer of sorts, a pianist plateau-ing ever since his parents’ deaths. There are lots of signs that say that he’s not over them, it’s been perhaps a good two years now, but he won’t admit it. He’ll say he’s over them, he’ll say he’s sure they wouldn’t want him mourning over them for too long. But that’s all.

He’s getting by. He’s _only_ getting by.

Yixing has been in this high school for a few months, not even half a year. He’s friends with the principal, Kim Minseok, and though he does not have an official post as a teacher due to the lack of formal teaching experience, he’s been given a salary that lets him get by, and he’s allowed to the school grounds even after the gates are closed, in order to play the piano. 

Mainly because his salary can’t buy him a piano. Nor can it rent a place big enough to fit a piano. It can just give him a sense of reassurance; tell him that doing the thing he loves can at least provide him a roof and food. And by extension, a grand piano to play in the middle of the night in a large and empty auditorium. It’s not too bad. 

He wouldn’t risk for more.

 

“What brings you back?” he blurts out into the cold air. The words sound like they can barely reach its recipient, but they do. Yifan jerks up; the gate rattles to his brusque movements.  
He is smiling but something seems rather morose about the smile. Yixing can’t quite put his finger on it.

Wu Yifan. Yixing starts remembering the things he read about the man as a student. There hadn’t been much in the records – Park someone wrote a short piece for him next to his graduation photo saying he was friendly yet aloof, popular amongst girls yet unattainable; a guy detached from the world. There had also been a note about Yifan being a regular on the basketball team. 

There had not been much else about him. Specifically, to Yixing’s dismay, there hadn’t been any note about him playing the piano. Or him being particularly gifted in the music domain.

 

Yifan holds up the bottle of alcohol he had been holding, indicating that the topic revolves around it. Yixing tenses up and stays still, holding onto his bicycle even though the grip makes his knuckles feel even more ice-cold.

“This cheap-ass bottle of shite.”

Yixing knots his eyebrows. “That’s _respectful_.”

The other chuckles, albeit indignant. “If disrespect’s the thing that can bring me back to you, then I might as well.”

Yixing swallows hard and fidgets a bit. “W— What’s holding you back?”

There’s silence in the breeze that separates them. 

“I’m still trying to figure that out.”

Yixing looks up. “I see.”

“Yeah.”

Yixing takes a step forward hesitantly. The tire of the bicycle squeaks softly against the pavement.

 

“I wanted to see you.”

Yixing halts. 

“You realize you just—” Yixing starts, his nervousness imploding before exploding, “disappeared for weeks? M-months? You d-didn’t— You didn’t even—”

A frown forms on Yifan’s face.

“—I’m sor—”

“I was _worried_ —” Yixing cuts in, emphasizes on his words so he could control his stutter.

“—I didn’t mean to—”

“Don’t you _dare_ say you didn’t mean to hurt me,” Yixing sounds more desperate than he means to be. His own sentence catches him off-guard. 

Yifan has stood up. He’s got a hand to his forehead, a groan at the back of his throat. Yixing looks down at the pavement and decides that they are both tired.

He walks the distance between them, pushing his bike towards a bike-stand. He passes Yifan; their shoulders brush lightly. He shuffles through his pockets for the key to the gate. He takes a bit long because he’s trembling.

That’s when he feels arms wrap around him, and the warmth of Yifan’s breath against his nape.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” he hears him whisper softly, against it.

Yixing turns his head, and his cheek meets Yifan’s nose, and they’re so close, he thinks their breaths have synced almost instantly.

Yifan moves his head away and settles on the shorter’s other shoulder. The smell of alcohol drifts in the air, and Yixing looks back in front and focuses on opening the gate. He’s having a hard time getting the key to fit into the keyhole, and he blames his uneasiness.

 

“I’ll play tonight,” Yifan says, resolute.

 

Yixing stops. He swallows dryly.

“What’s the occasion,” he hears himself ask.

“I – don’t have one.”

Yixing smiles briefly, his fingers lingering on the key and lock.  
“Let’s see what you’ve got.”

 

 

Yifan hesitates in front of the piano. The music teacher cocks his head. He looks down the aisle, at the red carpeted floor, as if it could make him feel any more reassured.

“You don’t have to,” he says after it has been dead silent for ten minutes. He watches as Yifan passes a hand through his hair with an edginess that makes Yixing uneasy.

Yixing sits back and massages his arms, idly. 

“Just give me a bit.”

Yixing nods. “We’ve all night.”

 

“Yixing—”

“Want to take a stroll instead?”

“— Yeah.”

 

There’s so much Yixing wants to ask. He can guess that Yifan isn’t just your typical pianist. Conceivably, pianists are almost all a bit atypical inside, especially hobbyist pianists. They tend to have quite a hand at weaving enigma around themselves. 

Not that Yixing is an exception to the unformulated rule, but he does feel like Yifan is something out of the ordinary. A pianist who needs to be caught off-guard. A pianist from whom it takes a fortune, an arm and a leg, to get to hear a piece. Yixing only got to hear one even though they’ve been around this very grand piano multiple times.

Yixing hums absentmindedly. It’s a song he’s never heard prior to the first time Yifan played it – it goes in a loop at one point. It’s not tiring, but the weariness in each key is evident, and Yixing wonders about what each note means. He hums more, and only realizes moments later that Yifan is listening closely. 

“I might be a few keys off, mind you,” Yixing mutters.

“Well, I wouldn’t be able to tell.”

“ _Flattering_ ,” Yixing grins playfully, but Yifan just blinks confusedly back at him.

“I try,” the taller pianist replies, now a bit bemused.

 

They walk on a bit and circle a baseball field, the one behind the auditorium. Yixing whimsically gathers some courage and asks: “So, when are we going to exchange phone numbers?”

It takes the other aback, which makes Yixing shrink away a bit timidly, so the shorter looks away and tries making out the edge of the field in the dark.

“Oh— sure? Here—”

“— Don’t feel forced?” Yixing adds cautiously, taking Yifan’s proffered phone. He dials his own phone number slowly, leaving some time for Yifan to change his mind – that is, if he had felt forced. Yixing hits the call button, after giving the taller a glance. His pocketed phone vibrates; he ends the call. He then punches his name in. Zhang Yixing. 

It sounds too formal to Yixing’s liking. He backspaces and types _Xing_ instead before handing the phone back to Yifan, and checking his own.

He creates a new contact, types in _Fan_ to be fair.

“C-can I actually call you Xing?”

Yixing cocks his head, eyes grinning, a dimple showing. “Not before you actually play me something.”

Yifan frowns but a genuine smile forms, and Yixing finds it way too endearing for his own good. “It’s a deal?”

“A deal,” Yixing whispers into the night.

 

 

 

Yixing wakes up with his leg dangling from the side of the bed and his left arm folded behind his head. He moves and feels the soreness shoot across his limbs. It makes him groan, and he flips over, face buried in his pillow. 

It smells like morning.

The cars are already honking at each other outside of his narrow window – he had forgotten to close it, now that he thinks about it. It’s peculiar he doesn’t feel too chilled despite the previous night only being around ten degrees Celsius.

When he turns over to the other side of the bed, he isn’t entirely sure why he half expects someone to be cuddled next to him. However, there is nothing but his cheap digital clock sitting amidst the drapes. He frowns. It reads six fifty-nine a.m. His alarm will go off any seconds now. He closes his eyes tight.

However, what rings first is his phone, and then the angry siren of his clock. He dismantles it with a groan, and then he grabs his mobile and checks his notifications.

There’s a series of text-messages from his friend that hadn’t come through the night before.

> from **han-ge**  
>  [21:04] where u at, bro  
>  [22:19] earth to xing, we had a meetup tgt, remember?? note the past tense  
>  [22:25] ur on the piano at seok’s school, arent u  
>  [22:50] will 1 reply kill u, lololol  
>  [23:07] its getting late, pls get some rest, kk?  
>  [00:10] u home?  
>  [00:12] whatever is keepin u from me better be worth it otherwise i will throttle u  
>  [00:13] sweet dreams, xing  
>  [00:14] i hope hot steamy sex with a handsome stranger is what’s keeping u istg i wont forgive u otherwise, u fucking stood me up  
> 

Yixing massages his temple. 

He had completely forgotten about the meet-up with Luhan. He hadn’t planned to stay at the school for long. In fact, he had only wanted to pick up a tote bag, one that he had forgotten and left behind.

Yifan’s face flashes across Yixing’s mind. He sits up abruptly. He backs out of his messages and switches to the Contacts application and searches for Yifan.

He finds _Fan_ instead.

And then, at the next moment, as if on cue, a message comes in.

> from **Fan**  
>  [07:05] g’morning  
> 

Yixing bites his lower lip as a dimpled smile spreads across his face. 

>   
>  from **Fan**  
>  [14:08] want to hang out tonight?  
> 

“Teacher Zhang, your phone!” a tall skinny student with dirty-blond hair snickers, motioning at Yixing’s phone on the desk, wiggling his eyebrow. “Girlfriend?” 

Yixing waves him off.

>   
>  to **Fan**  
>  [14:10] sure. where at?
> 
> from **Fan**  
>  [14:10] depends on the weather  
> 

Turns out that on a clear night, Yifan explains to Yixing how he would drive just to ‘get lost’. Yixing asks if there’s any correlation between the two, and Yifan merely responds with a shrug and then a chuckle. They enjoy the drive nonetheless. It doesn’t make any sense to Yixing, the build-your-schedule-according-to-the-weather thing Yifan has been mumbling about, but then again, there’s no real solid definition or theory to the warmth he feels when they’re laughing together, when they’re keeping quiet together and contemplating the horizon in front of them. He doesn’t feel like he really needs a philosophy explaining what the weather’s got in store for Wu Yifan. 

Yixing flips through the things in the passenger’s compartment. His first grab is for the round fashionable sunglasses with a metallic gold frame. He tries imagining it on Yifan; the mental image makes him smile. He glances up at Yifan who is evidently trying to ignore him, but the light smirk across the driver’s face gives him away.

Yixing tries on the spectacles: the night could not have seemed any darker. He looks at himself in the rear mirror. He looks passable.

He then continues on: he discovers a compilation of piano songs, ranging from YouTuber’s covers to world-renown pianists. He pops it into the player, and he discusses about how some of the covers sound half-assed, how some of the covers are phenomenal, how Yifan looks good, driving the car, humming with a smile. 

 

Yixing sleeps particularly well, that night.

> from **Fan**  
>  [16:20] are u free now?
> 
> to **Fan**  
>  [16:20] something up?
> 
> from **Fan**  
>  [16:20] do u want to go biking?
> 
> to **Fan**  
>  [16:20] but it’s pouring  
>  [16:22] ??  
> 

“So you bike when it’s raining?” 

“You’ll love it.”

Yixing eyes Yifan. “Okay... I’m looking forward?”

Yifan nods with a bashful grin. He then mounts his bike – a sturdy white Giant – and rides into the shower, arms stretched out fully. He glances back at Yixing, who’s hesitating under a large canopy with his beat-up second-hand silver Shimano. The streets are filled with cars waiting in jammed traffic. The rainwater is steadily flowing to the gutters along the sidewalks.

Yifan circles back. He’s already drenched. Yixing eyes him incredulously.

“There’s a cycling bridge near here. You coming?”

There’s something beckoning in his tone. Yixing nods carefully. “Are you sure this is the best way to hang out on a rainy Sunday afternoon?”

Yifan shrugs, cocks his head lightly. “Well, I can’t guarantee that.”

Yixing snorts. He looks away, down the street.

“If you want to stay home and watch the telly, we could do that,” Yifan says. “I can’t say that sounds entirely exciting though.”

The shorter rolls his eyes. “Okay, okay. I’ll do it.”

Yifan raises an eyebrow. “Mount, then.”

“What if I catch a cold? Don’t you catch colds?” Yixing whines as he mounts. “I’m teaching tomorrow.”

The taller man stretches his arms above his head before leaning forward. He then looks at Yixing. “If we’re just going to stand around, chances are I will.”

Yixing grimaces. “Oh, and you’ll blame me?”

“Chances are, I _will_ ,” Yifan replies, amused. 

“I better not regret this.”

“You won’t.”

 

The rain is falling hard, and the first thing that comes to Yixing’s mind when he hits the road is how unsafe this is, rather than the possibility of catching a cold later. Yifan is biking almost blindly through the streets, and Yixing finds it hard to keep up, what with the wind blowing rain into his eyes. He squints and blinks uncomfortably.

But the second they hit the empty cycling road, the experience changes. There’s some sort of exhilaration that starts building in the pianist’s chest, a sort of excitement that makes him feel like he can let go of anything past, present, and future. 

Yifan’s already way ahead of him, but he doesn’t care, he takes his time and he lets the wind and kinetic energy move him across. He feels light, weightless. 

The raindrops roll down his cheeks. They feel cold at first, but after a while they feel warm, soothing, almost satiating.

 

“It always starts off cold, but after a while, you warm up,” Yifan says nonchalantly when he passes Yixing a dry beach towel from his sports bag when they both reach Yixing’s place. “It gets your blood going. Cleanses your soul. That type of thing. Did you have fun?”

Yixing just smiles.

 

 

Yixing thinks Yifan has been a lot less an enigma, and a lot more an actual human being. Not some phantom, not some intangible fantasy hunk. It’s funny because ever since, they’ve only been contacting through text-messages instead; they have both been a tad busier. Everything should have started feeling more virtual, less real and concrete, less of the nonsensical weather-to-activity baloney, but now Yixing thinks their conversations have been closer to reality, further from all the dramatic oomph they used to have in between.

> from **Fan**  
>  [10:06] its my bday today
> 
> to **Fan**  
>  [10:06] i know ^^
> 
> from **Fan**  
>  [10:06] how??? i never told u
> 
> to **Fan**  
>  [10:07] student records
> 
> from **Fan**  
>  [10:07] ur curiosity killed the cat called Surprise
> 
> to **Fan**  
>  [10:07] happy birthday (❁´◡`❁)*✲ﾟ*
> 
> from **Fan**  
>  [10:08] actually i lied
> 
> to **Fan**  
>  [10:08] le gasp
> 
> from **Fan**  
>  [10:08] the surprise is
> 
> to **Fan**  
>  [10:08] you’re going to ask me out on a date? (❁´◡`❁)*✲ﾟ*
> 
> from **Fan**  
>  [10:08] i  
>  [10:08] yeah  
>  [10:08] r u psychic or
> 
> to **Fan**  
>  [10:21] well, u still need to tell me when and where. im not that psychic.  
> 

Yixing has a so-to-say more “normal” date with Yifan at some small café about a dozen streets away. He smiles into his bathroom mirror, and tries different angles, making sure he looks all right and tidy. He’s wearing a white shirt with a black collar and black jeans. He thinks he looks passable. He contemplates a few more seconds and decides maybe he wants a t-shirt instead. Something less formal. Maybe lose the black jeans. Get some ripped ones. 

Turns out he’s wearing a white tee and ripped jeans indeed, and Yifan turns up with a shirt and plaited pants. They laugh nervously at each other’s attire before ordering – a cappuccino for Yixing, a mocha for Yifan. 

The coffee shop is more spacious than Yixing had thought. 

The furnishing is minimal, a little too simple, but comfortable. Yixing notices the small tucked-up upright white piano at the corner. He smiles at it before turning to face Yifan.

“The lighting is too dim,” the taller man mutters impertinently, and Yixing cocks his head. 

“It’s fine,” Yixing says. “You come here often?”

Yifan laughs. “I guess.”

Yixing raises an eyebrow. “Do you play the piano in the corner, there?” To this, he feels Yifan tense up. He squirms in his seat as the silence starts dragging. Yifan takes a deep breath, and it makes the other even more nervous.

“Nah,” Yifan mutters. It’s almost an unnecessary reply since the silence just resumes right after. Fortunately, their orders are served and Yixing takes up his cup and takes some time just daydreaming over coffee.

“Maybe you can play on it?” Yifan then says, rather sheepishly. Yixing almost drops his cup, but it just falls to its saucer with an unceremonious clank. 

“I-I mean, if you want to?” Yifan adds nervously. 

Yixing bites his lower lip before bursting into laughter. “Of course. It’s your birthday.”

Yifan stays quiet, and Yixing watches the other’s gaze dive down to his cup of mocha.

“Any requests?” Yixing asks softly. The taller man looks up and smiles briefly. 

“I don’t mind.”

Yixing eyes Yifan for a few seconds, waiting out to see if there may not be any last-second requests. Their gazes lock like they fit. It’s an abstract feeling Yixing thinks he might like. He grins gently.

 

The next moment he’s already at the piano. He’s testing a few keys. He ghosts his hand over them. It is a bit dusty, a bit rusty, but it’ll do. It can do—

Before he starts, he closes his eyes. The background ambiance music has just been turned off – he had asked the barista if they could – and now the moment and focus is on him. He relaxes his shoulders but exhales nervously instead. He tries to think about things he likes – it has always helped him through any sort of pressure. 

So he thinks of bunnies, food, music. Rhyming words, fragrant flowers, anonymous sonnets written for anonymous people. 

Then he thinks of the school. Walking beyond the gate, around the fountain, opening the double doors to the auditorium. Playing the piano at the dead of the night, to his soul’s content, on a stage with no audience before it.

He thinks of Yifan. He thinks of the first night he had seen him. He hadn’t expected him. He expected another one of those nights where he felt independent from the world. 

He hadn’t expected Yifan, and Yifan’s song.

 

 

Something had triggered while Yixing played on the piano, at the café. _That_ , he is sure.

When he turns around and people – old folks, a few young couples – are clapping casually, but he sees Yifan come to him with a heavy frown and some form of impatience. Yifan grabs him by the hand, and that’s a first, and then pulls him towards the glass-pane doors, towards the streets, passing by their table where Yixing spies a paid bill and a half-full mocha.

They don’t really talk as they bump through the crowd. Their hands are tightly interlocked, and even though Yixing has no idea where they are headed, he feels safe. Maybe it’s also the adrenaline from having played a piano piece. He can still feel the tingles at the tips of his fingers.

They stop at a place – a sort of town house, and Yifan leads him up the couple of steps and he watches Yifan punch in at the numbers to unlock the main door. Yixing takes the time to look around and gets a glimpse of where he’s at before getting pushed in and then up a few flights of stairs.

“This is your—” Yixing starts when he takes a hesitant step into Yifan’s flat, but before he can finish his question, he feels Yifan’s hand slide down his forearm, his back against some wall, and lips crushing against his own.

“—mmph—”

Yifan tastes of coffee— they both taste of coffee. But Yifan tastes of a bit of chocolate and there’s also a tinge of fruitiness that Yixing can’t seem to define. The mocha might have had something in it other than just the usual espresso, milk, and chocolate.

Or maybe it’s just Yifan. There’s something sweet, full, saccharine. Yixing closes his eyes and he tries his best to keep up. He presses back, their noses bump and he gasps for air, except the air turns out to just be Yifan pushing through even more. Their tongues mingle a bit before Yixing pushes the other away, his hands on Yifan’s chest as he heaves for air.

“S-sorry,” the taller man says, mild guilt dawning across his face. Yixing huffs a bit more but he’s smiling and he wraps his arms around Yifan’s neck and he brings them both a bit closer. His dimple must have taken Yifan’s breath away, he guesses as he watches the other’s eyes glisten.

“I just need some air. This is fine,” Yixing presses in, long and firmly before backing an inch and murmuring, “More than fine.”

He can feel Yifan relax. Yixing’s shoulders press against the taller’s chest. Their fingers are intertwined again. Their breaths are united again. Their kisses are needy, again.

Yifan brings up one of his big hands to Yixing’s cheek, the side with the more prominent dimple. 

Yixing pulls his own hands down. He ghosts them over Yifan’s chest, mainly for support, but then he’s pressing against them, gently going down the sides, down his torso.

“You don’t work out, do you,” Yixing comments playfully, in between kisses, and Yifan answers by pinning him harder against the walls.

 

It doesn’t take too long before Yixing’s hand brushes against Yifan’s skin, near the waist, near the hip, whichever is closer, Yixing can’t really tell.

“Xing…” Yifan whispers into his ear, and the shorter shivers with mild elation. He kisses the other’s neck as gently as he can – before biting down hard and slow although his teeth don’t pierce through. He then lets go but soon opts for a rough yet semi-apologetic suck, then, a few tender butterfly kisses wherever he can reach. He then suckles at the slight bruise, lick, bite, suckle, lick, kiss again. 

The taller man halts in his movements and groans, throwing his head back slowly. 

Somehow the air feels a bit cooler, a bit calmer. A bit tamer.

“We’ve skipped a few steps here,” Yixing whispers. “I played the piano. You’re hard as a rock. I think I missed a whole chunk. Don’t you think?” His hands are fumbling with the buckle, the belt, the button, the zipper, the elastic of Yifan’s boxer.

“Maybe the chunk can come later?” Yifan asks, in a pleading tone, as he buries his nose into the other’s hair, inhaling the scent of the younger’s shampoo.

 

“Hmm— okay.”

 

 

 

Yixing is arching up from the floor and its wooden planks feel cold to his skin, but he doesn’t have a care in the world other than for the man who’s hovering above him, hesitant and shy and too gentle for someone so tall, big, almost majestic. 

Yixing never really tops because he has always preferred being taken care of, but the way Yifan takes care of him just makes _him_ want to take care of this giant guy with the heart of a domestic rabbit. He tries sitting up, supports himself on his elbows before he reaches for Yifan’s nape and brings them both close, forehead sticking together, noses touching.

“I’m ready,” he says firmly. “You’re ready, too. It’s okay.”

Yifan nods and closes his eyes and takes a breath before pushing his member in, millimetre by millimetre, achingly slow but, in a whole other way, pleasurably paced. Yixing tightens his inside impulsively and groans as the head pushes past his ring. It starts stretching a bit more, and Yixing’s breaths hitch.

“Bad?” Yifan’s eyebrows knot, his eyes marked with concern.

“Good. It’s— It’s good…” Yixing whimpers. “You’re… b-big— ah…”

“Wait, let me just— some mo-more— l-lube?”

Yixing’s cheeks feel red and sore from blushing, but he flushes a bit more, his mind a haze, his lips apart. “Y-yeah…”

Yifan gets to it but fumbles with the cap and the bottle tips over a bit on the nightstand. 

“Just take the w-whole bottle…”

“Po-pour – it?”

“Yes—”

The gel feels cold for only a split second before it turns lukewarm as Yifan dives in even further. Yixing grabs at the other’s back, his nails digging in slightly. The slide becomes easier, and before either of them really understand, they’re already building a rhythm.

“Ugh— fuck—” Yixing moans as the pace shows no suggestion of ever slowing down, as the pace proves to be completely out of his control. “Ye— augh—”

Yifan is decidedly quiet, or entirely inarticulate with his very occasional groans. Yixing wishes he had that much of a grasp on his own consciousness, but his insides are boiling and melting, feeling the sensation shoot up his spine. It’s hard to focus on anything other than holding onto the taller’s shoulder and keeping as steady as possible.

It’s even worse when Yifan finds Yixing’s spot, then upping the game even more when he tugs at Yixing’s long-overlooked dick. The sensation multiplies exponentially; Yixing is suddenly very close to his peak. With how high-pitched his moans have gotten, and how he’s probably unable to untighten around Yifan, he hopes the other has taken the hint.

Without much ceremony, Yixing reaches up and kisses Yifan with a closed mouth, hurried yet firm, and comes. 

The taller cups Yixing’s cheeks and kisses him even more affectionately before caressing his neck, hair, upper back. Yixing huffs, groans, and gasps as the titillation throughout his body tries to settle.

Yixing trembles a bit as he starts riding it out, up and down, forward and backward, this time his hands indolently over the other’s shoulder. He grinds a bit more before his body feels too heavy, lax, usurped of energy. He looks into Yifan’s eyes, trying to forecast the other’s progression.

Funny how he hadn’t expected Yifan to come just seconds after one more of those long and tender kisses.

 

 

Yixing is holding the teacup in his hands, on his lap, fiddling absentmindedly with the handle when Yifan comes to sit next to him on the couch, an arm’s length apart from the assistant music teacher.

There’s a bit of a stiff distance, but at this point Yixing thinks it’s okay if he takes the initiative and scoots closer and rests his head against the other’s shoulder.

“Care to explain the missing puzzle piece now?” Yixing singsongs. He feels Yifan’s hand shyly rubbing against a large hickey on his neck.

“Right.”

There’s a bit of silence, and it’s not like Yixing hadn’t been expecting it.

“Well,” Yifan takes another pause and tries to breathe. “Okay.”

“O-kay,” Yixing nods. He looks away, out the window. He thinks maybe it’ll help the other kickstart the conversation, if anything. 

“First thing’s first?”

“Sure,” Yixing responds.

“I’m— I’m in love with you.”

Yixing’s heart skips a beat. Or two. Or three. It’s decidedly unhealthy. He turns his gaze back at Yifan, who’s been staring at his own teacup before looking up and locking gazes with Yixing.

“Me too,” the music teacher says, and he realizes it takes away his breath and rest of his heartbeats to say it even though he hadn’t hesitated. The feeling is tremendously overwhelming.

Yifan shakes his head. “No. You’re not.”

“I’m? Pretty sure I am,” Yixing affirms.

“No, no,” Yifan mutters, despondent. “You’re… you’re in love with the pianist me who… well, err, doesn’t exist.”

Yixing raises an eyebrow. He’s the type of guy who would understand that pianists can be peculiar, _sensitive_ people – being one himself – but Yifan is not making much sense at the moment, so he just frowns.

“I— I can’t play the piano.”

Yixing’s mystery man just got more mysterious. He curls his fingers around his cup, and turns it clockwise. He’s getting a bit more nervous himself.

“Enlighten me.”

Yifan sits up straight, then relaxes back into the cushions.

“I— I don’t know how to play the piano.”

“That’s just rephrasing.”

“I— This is really complicated.”

“Take your time,” Yixing says, “I’m here to stay.”

Yifan laughs. “Well, okay. I don’t know how to play the piano per se. I think my granddad taught me a piece when I was small – then he passed on. That’s all. I don’t remember how to play it, but I think when I get drunk enough… I … play the piano.” Yifan takes a deep breath. “And then I forget the next day.”

“At first I didn’t know? But at one point, my high school friend – Park Chanyeol – figured out a sequence where I, well, consistently forget… It usually always entails me playing the piano when I’m drunk and I only drink on cloudy days and—” Yifan coughs because he might have been out of air. “—then I met you and I think you heard me play a piece?”

“Yeah,” Yixing affirms, conjuring up the night he had seen Yifan for the first time, from the double doors. The taller man had been completely entranced, spellbound. The piece had been mesmerizingly morose, now that Yixing thinks about it. It’s no wonder.

“I just— I think, I think I fell in love with you, then.”

Yixing’s teacup has gone a bit cold, but he starts feeling warm in the chest.

“But— I forgot… because well, of my condition? I don’t know… But I worked my way back: I asked Chanyeol where we went, if we had met anyone, ‘cause I— I actually remembered your voice? It was eerie. You had said my student number— ?”

“One-o sixty-one double-o,” Yixing says. He remembers it clearly. It’s a string of number with one too many zeros. 

“— Yeah,” Yifan nods, “Then I figured out later it was you. I don’t know if you remember that day when I hurt my arm climbing over the gate and—”

“— I dragged you to the infirmary and did a poor first-aid job. Yes,” Yixing completes with a dimpled grin. “Yes, I remember. You—” he pauses a bit deliberately because something gets caught up in his throat, “You weren’t drunk, that night, were you?”

Yifan takes two seconds to think before saying, “No. I remember it clearly— I had been driving. It was a clear night.”

“Clear nights and driving to get lost, haha. Right,” Yixing laughs nervously.

“Yeah…”

There’s another silent gap between them, and Yixing decides it’s appropriate. It gives him enough time to digest everything – he also takes the time to curl his fingers with Yifan’s, just to let him know he’s okay, he’s not leaving, he’s staying, he just needs a bit of time. 

Yifan’s fingers tighten around his. It’s a very soothing feeling.

“And—” Yixing starts, his eyes still fixed on their hands, “Why do you think I wouldn’t be in love with you? The whole of you? Pianist or not?”

Yifan freezes up. “Well. I don’t know. I had a feeling you liked the – pianist in me? You wanted me to play on your birthday, and I fucked up and ran—”

“—I pressured you, haha, it’s okay,” Yixing reassures, then looks down. “But… then you disappeared.”

“I… I got sick,” Yifan explains. Then he admits, “And then after that, I decided to reset my life. I upset Chanyeol too, back then. I hadn’t contacted him. He was worried sick. You were worried sick, and I hadn’t been able to bring myself to apologize to either of you… And then I applied for piano classes.”

Yixing widens his eyes. “Piano classes?”

“I— I guess I was trying to be the pianist you saw in me? Haha.”

Yixing nudges him. “You could have just told me all this from the start, haha.”

“Well, I think— I think it’s only easier once you know my… weather routine. Once you get to know that I’m a dramatic sap. Or something.”

Yixing thinks about the drive during that one clear night, and then the biking frenzy in the rain. He smiles.

“Yeah, I guess there’s that.”

“Well, yeah. I guess that’s pretty much it.”

“What happened to the piano lessons?”

“Let’s just say I’m still not past being able to read a music sheet fluently.”

Yixing smiles. “I can help.”

Yifan laughs. “I’ll take up that offer.”

Yixing slips a leg over Yifan’s, and settles comfortably on the taller’s lap, facing the other.

“But not now,” he whispers into the elder’s ear. “I want to cuddle.”

“I’m – I’m in no hurry.”

> from **han-ge**  
>  [10:06] are u just never gonna respond? r u dead? should i be dialing 911, report that ur missing? shit im serious
> 
> to **han-ge**  
>  [10:06] omg sorry but no, i was busy, dont dial, im fine, just oh sehun was asking for advice with his singing, and u know how long it takes away from my morning break
> 
> from **han-ge**  
>  [10:06] ok i forgive u. he’s a little bitch and ur an angel  
>  [10:07] but not forgiving u for last night, where the fuck were u  
>  [10:07] thank the lords tao showed up, or i would have looked stupid
> 
> to **han-ge**  
>  [10:07] u look great 24/7, dont worry  
>  [10:07] i was at minseok’s and yifan showed up  
>  [10:07] how’s tao?? havent seen that boy in forever
> 
> from **han-ge**  
>  [10:07] who cares about tao  
>  [10:07] isnt yifan the douchebag who made u cry on ur bday?
> 
> to **han-ge**  
>  [10:08] yes but like idk man its  
>  [10:08] its complicated
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> from **han-ge**  
>  [10:49] yeah, i guess that’s what love does  
>  [10:56] u like him a lot, dont u  
>  [11:20] earth to yixing!!
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> to **han-ge**  
>  [11:26] yeah  
>  [11:38] i do. i like him a lot


End file.
